


Confessions and Contingencies

by RosalindInPants



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 16:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17625728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindInPants/pseuds/RosalindInPants
Summary: We know that Wolfe didn't tell Santi about his printing press while he was working on it, but by the time Jess tells them about Thomas's press in Ink and Bone, Santi knows what it is. That means Wolfe had to have told Santi about it at some point, presumably before Ink and Bone... and Wolfe does seem to like being a bit dramatic about things...Trigger warning for suicidal thoughts and a few vague references to past torture, because this is Wolfe, after all.





	Confessions and Contingencies

When Christopher Wolfe said he wanted to go out, Niccolo Santi had expected to spend the day in the city. He had been so glad to see his partner show any interest in leaving the house at all that he agreed without asking for specifics, thinking they might end up at the theater, or one of those little outdoor cafes that Chris used to stop at on his way to his office, or maybe even the bar at the High Garda compound. Instead, he was out in the middle of nowhere, climbing a rocky path with the sound of crashing waves in the distance.

Wolfe had gone ahead, clambering up the trail with ease that was a relief to see after so many weeks of watching the man recover, too slowly, from wounds that he still had yet to explain. Not that any explanation was truly necessary; Santi had enough experience with wounds and scars of his own to read the story in the marks that covered his lover's body. Thanks to the disappearance of Christopher's work from the Codex and the Artifex's rather aggressive warning to stop looking for him while he was gone, Santi even knew who was responsible. The question of what to do about it, what he even could do about it without risking further harm to the man he loved, remained.

The exercise gave him some relief from the nagging need to do something, at least, and it seemed to be doing Wolfe some good as well. Maybe after so much time in captivity, he needed the freedom of the open air. He looked almost like himself again, though Santi could see the stiffness in his shoulders, the way he still favored his left leg, the way the Scholar's robe hung too loose on him. The robe was impractical for such an outing, but Chris had been wearing the things like armor since he had recovered enough to dress himself. Another scar.

Ahead, the trail narrowed, passing through a gap between the rocks. Wolfe slipped through quickly, disappearing into the shadows before Santi could even get his pack off. The clinking of wine bottles from the bag forced him to stop and rearrange things. It was strange to see food for a picnic in the bag instead of the usual High Garda supplies, but Wolfe's sudden interest in roughing it only went so far. He might eat ration bars and drink stale canteen water in war zones without complaint, but Christopher Wolfe had higher standards for a more leisurely outing. He would not have his lunch without wine, and that meant Santi had to make sure the bottles were secure lest they break and spoil the meal.

The narrow passage opened out onto a cliff overlooking the ocean, high enough up that the waves below looked like mere lines on a smooth, blue-green canvas. Gulls circled against the cloudless blue of the sky, and the afternoon sun warmed the sandy stone beneath his feet. It should have been beautiful, but somehow, the word that came to mind as Santi took in the view was  _desolate_.

And there, with the toes of his boots hanging over the edge, stood Christopher Wolfe, his black robe billowing out behind him, black hair tangling in the breeze.

Santi's heart raced at the sight of him, but he forced himself to be still. Slowly, silently, he set the pack down, keeping his eyes fixed on Wolfe's unmoving silhouette as he did. One careful step at a time, he approached, the way he did when Chris got lost in memories and forgot where he was. For all Santi knew, that was exactly what was happening, just in a far more dangerous location than usual. He kept his breathing steady, reminded himself that he had brought his beloved Scholar safely through wars and burner attacks. He had taken a knife from Christopher's hands, on one particularly awful night not nearly long enough ago. He could get the man away from the edge of this damned cliff.

He was nearly close enough to get hold of Wolfe's arm when Wolfe turned, a smirk on his face. "I wouldn't have thought it so hard to stay with me, there being only one path to follow."

The sarcasm should have been grating, but Santi felt only relief, and a touch of embarrassment. Had he really become so paranoid? He smiled and let his gaze creep up from his lover's feet, still too close to the edge for comfort, to meet his eyes. "Had to stop a while to admire the view."

"I'm terribly sorry for spoiling it, then," Wolfe said, but he was smiling, and he took a step closer to pull Santi in for a kiss.

Santi yielded readily, eager not only for the taste of his lover's lips but for the excuse to wrap his arms around him and pull him another step back, away from the jagged rocks he could see all too clearly below.

At the third step back from the edge, Wolfe turned his face away. "I am not going to fall," he said, though his arms were wrapped around Santi's waist so tightly that they were beginning to shake.

"Maybe not," Santi conceded, "But I'm thirsty after all that climbing. Are we opening the white first or the red?"

Wolfe, thankfully, let himself be led back into the shadow of the taller cliffs behind them and coaxed into helping spread out the blanket and set out the food while Santi pulled the cork from the first bottle of wine. They sat side by side on the rough wool High Garda issued blanket, passing the wine bottle back and forth while they nibbled at the selection of meats, cheeses, marinated olives, grapes, and bread that Wolfe had packed. It reminded Santi a little of their evenings together in Wolfe's Lighthouse office, back when he still had one, back when they were still new to each other. Upon discovering Wolfe's terrible habit of working late and skipping meals, Santi started bringing him dinner, always simple finger foods that could be eaten while working. More and more often, he'd manage to lure Wolfe away from his studies long enough to enjoy a conversation, a game of chess, even a chapter of a thoroughly trashy romance novel, before they parted for the night.

And here was Wolfe, once again, bottle of wine in hand, laughing as he described an impressively unrealistic bedroom scene in the novel he had just finished. And Santi, having left that particular blank loaded and lying around to provoke this very reaction from his partner, joined in. Maybe they could come back from everything, after all, he thought. Maybe the nights of screaming and the days of jumping at shadows would end, for both of them. Santi wanted to see Wolfe truly happy again so much it hurt, and this glimpse of what could be taunted him like a desert mirage.

But the bottle ran dry, and the food ran out, and Wolfe's face turned somber as he looked away from Santi, out toward the faint lines of the waves beyond the cliff's edge. Santi took out the second bottle of wine and the corkscrew, but Wolfe shook his head. "No, Nic, not yet. I didn't drag you all the way out here just to get drunk and make fun of atrocious novels."

Santi put the bottle down and waited. A pair of gulls flew low overhead, looking for scraps the two men hadn't left.

"Don't you want to know? Why I disappeared? Where I went? What happened? It isn't like you to be so incurious, Nic."

Of course he was. He would torture himself with every last detail of the horrors Chris had endured, if that knowledge were his to take. His rage at the Artifex, the Archivist, the Library might find direction if he knew what ambition of Wolfe's, or his mother's, had so frightened them that they felt the need to so brutally and thoroughly beat it out of him. He might find the place where the man he loved had spent a year screaming in the dark and burn it all to ashes. But not at the cost of causing the man he loved any more pain.

"I promised. No questions." And he had. In those first days, when Wolfe was delirious with fever and pain, he had cried out in his sleep for the questions to stop. When he at last opened lucid eyes, Santi had taken his hands and promised to ask him no questions, and he had kept that promise, even when the days of silence stretched before Wolfe found the will to speak again. Even when he came home to find the man he loved huddled in a corner and trembling at some unseen threat. Even when Wolfe scratched open his scars and held a knife to his own wrist. Santi would not be the one to tear open that wound. He knew as much as he needed to know.

Wolfe looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. "I don't deserve your kindness, dear Nic." He drew in a deep, ragged breath. "But you deserve to know what I've done. What you're giving aid and comfort to."

Hearing the tremor in his lover's voice, Santi reached out for Wolfe's hand. "It doesn't matter. You're here now. You're safe. You're healing."

But Wolfe drew back, just out of his reach. "You have no idea how wrong you are," he said with a bitter bark of a laugh. "I will never be safe again, nor will you, if you stay at my side. You should leave me. It would be for the best."

Santi looked at him with all the incredulity that statement deserved. "I am not going to leave you. I love you, Chris. Always."

Wolfe ran his fingers over the gold Library band that still circled his wrist. The scars at the edges of it were faint, almost invisible to one who didn't know where to look. Lines where another heavier cuff had closed over it and drove it into his skin until it drew blood. "Promise me, Nic, that you will never speak of what I am about to tell you. Promise you will never even write of this conversation in your journal. Swear it on your god and mine, on the love we have shared, on everything you hold dear."

Though he longed to pull Wolfe into his arms and assure him that whatever had him so upset, it didn't matter, Santi could see the determination in his partner's eyes. Wolfe wasn't going to let this go, no matter what this confession might cost him, and maybe he needed this. Maybe it was not a scar to be torn open but a festering boil to be lanced.  "I promise. By your gods and mine, by the love we will always share, by everything that matters in this world, I will die before I betray you."

"It isn't me I'm worried about," Wolfe said. "It's already far too late for that. I'm putting you in danger just by telling you this, but I can't go on letting you think of me as some innocent victim. You deserve to know, and this far away from Alexandria, it's as safe as it will ever be to tell you." He inhaled deeply, eyes fixed on the horizon, fingers still worrying at his gold band. "I built a device," he began, "One that I thought might save the Library, but I was wrong. It could destroy everything."

The machine he described did not seem so terrible at first. A way to copy books without the need for obscurists had clear advantages, given the vulnerability that the Iron Tower and its inhabitants represented in the system that Santi had spent his life protecting. The very idea of a way to copy books so easily that no one would ever again see the sole copy of a book burn filled him with a longing deeper than hunger. There would be no more need for confiscations, for investigations of smuggling rings, for Wolfe's parents to be imprisoned in the tower. But the more dangerous implications quickly became apparent. Control of the battlefield was everything in war, and this press was too easily duplicated, its books too easily spread across the world. There was no way to retract errors, no way to limit who had access to texts describing weapons, no way, even, to keep the burners and their ilk from using it to spread their propaganda. It was a double-edged sword, this invention of Christopher's, and Santi could understand all too well why the Library would want it suppressed.

He had been wrong. The Library hadn't tried to torture the ambition out of Chris, after all. It was this knowledge they had tried, and failed, to bleed out of him.

"I'll understand if you want to leave me," Wolfe said softly, when he had finished detailing the capabilities of his invention and the threat it could pose. He kept his eyes on the sea, but Santi could see the wetness growing in them. "I really am a dangerous heretic. I cannot ask you to risk your career or compromise your integrity. I'm not worth it."

The very thought of that was more abhorrent than any heresy. Santi held out his hands to Wolfe. Much as he wanted to pull the other man into his arms and kiss away the tears forming at the corners of his eyes, he knew better than to push too hard or move too quickly when Chris was so fragile. "You are worth everything, Christopher, everything. There is nothing I would not risk to stand by your side, and if that means the Library turns against me, too, so be it."

Wolfe's hand started to move toward Santi's, then stopped. His eyes darted toward his lover, then away again. Regardless of the name he had been given, he looked like nothing so much as a cornered cat. "Don't string me along with false hope, Nic, I can't bear it. If you can't stay with me, tell me now," he said, his voice gone harsh. "Leave me now, and you'll never have to see me again. You have my word on that."

It was the quick flick of his gaze toward the edge that gave it away. That and the nervous tension in his body.

Santi took the risk of rising to his knees to move closer. "I love you. No matter what the Archivist, the Artifex, or anyone else thinks of you, I love you. " He reached out to Wolfe again. "I cannot begin to imagine how much worse it was for you, but the year you were gone was the worst year of my life. I will not be parted from you again. Don't you even think of leaving me."

Wolfe came to his arms then, at last, shaking the way he did after the memories released him from their grasp. Shaking with relief. That was enough to confirm Santi's suspicions. He pulled Wolfe close, anchoring him in the security of his embrace while he murmured reassurances until the tremors stopped. Then he loosened his grasp, just a little, just enough to let him run his fingers through Wolfe's hair, gently separating the tangled strands as he said, "If I had left, you weren't planning to come back down that path, were you?"

"Was I that obvious?" Wolfe looked up at him, his eyes wet, his smile broken. "Don't look so worried, Nic. It was only a contingency plan. You understand contingency plans. I couldn't live without you. But I can live with you."

"Damn your contingency plans." Santi meant to be gentle when he leaned down to kiss Wolfe, but it turned into a fierce and hungry thing, full of all his fear and love and still too fragile hope. Wolfe met Santi's passion with his own, and for a time nothing mattered but the meeting of lips and tongues, the grasping of hands against backs and shoulders and hair.

"You present a most convincing argument," Wolfe said when they finally pulled apart, and the smile on his face looked more real, whole. It was gone too soon, replaced with regret. "I shouldn't have doubted you. I'm sorry."

Santi pressed a soft kiss to Wolfe's forehead. "They made you doubt everything, didn't they?"

"Everything but my love for you."

Wolfe rested his head on Santi's shoulder, and Santi reached for the wine, and they shared the bottle while the gulls flapped over their heads and the waves crashed against the rocks below. Wolfe had gone quiet with thoughts he was not yet ready to share, and Santi allowed him his silence. After the day's revelations, there were contingency plans to be made, and there was no time like the present to start contemplating the best ways to protect the only person in the world who mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> These books, and this pairing in particular, just need more fics.
> 
> I do not actually know if there is a location like this close enough to Alexandria. If there isn't, travel doesn't seem all that difficult in this world, so assume it's a weekend trip instead of a day trip, or something.


End file.
